Endnotes
by aces
Summary: Fitz forgets sometimes.


Title: Endnotes  
  
Author: aces  
  
Rating: G  
  
Summary: Fitz forgets sometimes.  
  
Disclaimers: I bow before the Almighty BBC; I supplicate at their altar and beg their forgiveness for borrowing their characters. Why do I feel like such a hypocritical heretic?  
  
Warnings/Notes: It's really a response to the shifts in Fitz's characterization through the years, I suppose (I was specifically rereading Kate Orman's "Year of Intelligent Tigers" when I wrote this, if that tells you anything). Nowhere near caught up with the books--last one I read was "History 101"--so if something's off in this, please just take it as A/U (which it'll be eventually anyway). This was supposed to be a nice, light- hearted, comedic affair, in keeping with the Everyfan's characterization (it's a term I do believe nickgeezer termed and I rather like), but then it went all horribly depressing. Why are we so terrible to the characters we like?  
  
ENDNOTES  
  
Fitz Kreiner feels a litle shaky, the way he does before a gig, the way he does before bluffing the bad guys, the way he does before confronting a bug- eyed monster. Like his heart has sprouted wings and they're beating uneasily in his too-small chest. Like he's in desperate need of a ciggie. "The anticipation is killing me," he has been known to groan on occasion when this feeling comes over him.  
  
Fitz Kreiner isn't sure what he's anticipating now.  
  
"Fitz?" the Doctor asks, and there's an odd, discordant note of conern in his voice, like playing D flat against C natural. Ugly and unresolved. "Fitz, look at me."  
  
Fitz looks up. He is lying on the ground. It takes him a moment to remember how to order his body to move, and when he manages to lift his head it feels unbearably heavy, his neck thin as a toothpick and far too weak to hold it up. But the Doctor's there to support him, lifting him up bodily, and he sags unresisting into the Doctor's grasp. "Fitz, why did you do that?" The Doctor's voice is very gentle now, as if speaking to a small child, and now it's D sharp against C natural, a minor third. Haunted.  
  
Fitz Kreiner wants to smile at his friend. He wants to tell the Doctor everything's alright; he's prepared to make a joke, laugh it off--whatever 'it' is--with "It's just a flesh wound" or "I'm not dead, just pining for the fjords." He wants to be reassuring but the words seem unable to come. It confuses him, worries him slightly.  
  
Fitz Kreiner sometimes forgets.  
  
"Can you hear me?" the Doctor asks, and Fitz finds the energy to nod a little. "I don't want to move you; you've been badly hurt." Something cold and grey shivers through the Doctor's blue eyes but it's gone when he refocuses on Fitz's face. "Do you remember what happened, Fitz? Do you remember what you did?"  
  
Fitz thinks about it but his mind draws a worrying blank. That shaky feeling is building; the anticipation makes him jittery and nervous. He could really use a cigarette right about now. He remembers to shake his head.  
  
The Doctor moves one arm from bracing Fitz in an upright position, taking Fitz's hand in his own. Fitz can feel a thready pulse in his wrist, where the Doctor holds it, as if there's a miniature heart with miniature wings down there. The beat is arhythmic, jerky, disjointed. Terrible drummer. The Doctor gently lets go of Fitz's wrist and feels his forehead, cool alien fingers against his sweaty human skin. The gesture is almost tender.  
  
Fitz Kreiner is becoming seriously worried.  
  
"You ran in here," the Doctor tells him, holding his companion up against his body while around them chaos surges on. People are shouting, yelling at each other, maybe even fighting, but the only one fallen is Fitz. "You were trying to get the two sides to listen to each other. I asked you to stall, while I tried to work something else out." The Doctor's breath hitches, but when Fitz struggles, turns his head to peer into his friend's face, the Doctor looks calm, completely collected, a stray curl looming over his pale eyes. "I told you not to actually go in there, find some other way; it was far too dangerous, one man alone trying to make both sides see reason. But your other tactics failed, you ran out of time, and I still hadn't come back--" The Doctor's grip tightens, rearranging Fitz more securely. "You were caught in the beginnings of the crossfire--" Fitz's eyes close involuntarily and his shakiness increases as the wings attached to his heart suddenly and urgently attempt to break out of his chest. "I'm so sorry Fitz--"  
  
"What's going-to happen?" Fitz asks.  
  
"I don't know," the Doctor answers honestly, and there's an hysterical laugh hiding somewhere in his voice, intensity building unnoticed, discordant D flat against C natural again. Fitz finds the urge to resolve the notes almost unbearable. "But they're not killing each other, Fitz, look. You got them to stop killing each other."  
  
Fitz Kreiner does indeed notice once again that he is the only one lying on the floor, other than the Doctor who is supporting him. He feels a rush of pride, of disbelief and crazy reckless grooviness that he's managed to stop people dying. And in that moment Fitz Kreiner forgets that he is dying.  
  
"Doctor!" A voice is hollering through the crowds surrounding them, and a small figure shoves her way through until she sees them lying in a heap. "Oh god--" she says, freezing, and then she swiftly joins them, kneeling on the ground, uncaring of her trousers. "Fitz--" She reaches out to touch him but her hand stops short and hovers awkwardly, painfully.  
  
He smiles, a flicker, a dying ember. "Hi Anji," he says and tries to think of something to say that he knows will irk her.  
  
She glances up at the Doctor and asks worriedly, "Can't you--?" Fitz doesn't need to shift position to see the answer the Doctor gives her; he reads it in Anji's face, the bite of a bottom lip and the narrowing of her dark eyes. They shift back down to his face, and she takes his hand at last. "Hi Fitz," she says and tries to smile. He manages a grin, just to show off, and desperately wishes for a smoke.  
  
Fitz Kreiner sometimes forgets.  
  
"Can't we at least move him?" Anji snaps. She needs to do something, feel that something is getting accomplished. If she has a task to focus on and complete, emotion will go away for the duration. Fitz is flattered that she feels a need to think about something other than her feelings for him. "I didn't realise you cared," he can't find the energy or nerve to say aloud.  
  
The Doctor shakes his head; Fitz can feel the movement behind him, the whisper of a breeze and the tickle of a light brown curl against his own head. He is almost dizzy with the shaky anticipating feeling. "I'd rather not," the Doctor admits, one arm around Fitz's body, holding Fitz against him, the other resting lightly on Fitz's own right arm. Fitz can't remember ever being so close to the Doctor, surrounded by him like this, and is embarassed by how safe he finds it. "It...wouldn't do any good; the TARDIS is too far away, and I..." The Doctor shifts slightly behind him, the odd note of concern back again, though his voice is perfectly clear, each word enunciated carefully. "Are you in any pain, Fitz?"  
  
Fitz considers for a while, taking note of each part of his body. "No," he is suprised to find out at last. Anji's hand tightens around his and he looks at her. "It's--alright, Anji," he says, and he's so shaky, the wings beating so hard and so fast in his chest, that he's breathless.  
  
Anji scowls, her grip convulsing, but she manages not to pull him in any direction, cause some currently numb part of his body to flare up in ugly disjointed pain. "How did this happen?" she growls up at the Doctor, and so he explains again, and he still sounds as calm and collected as before. But Anji is shaking her head, an unrealized movement, and looking at Fitz sadly.  
  
"You idiot," she tells him softly and reaches up with her free hand to brush the stringy dark hair away from his grey eyes. "You're not trained to handle this sort of situation; I've told you hundreds of times."  
  
"No-one else here--could," Fitz retorts, stung despite himself.  
  
"He saved the situation, Anji," the Doctor backs his companion up quickly. "I can end this now, peacefully. He saved the day."  
  
Anji is crying. "He's *dying* Doctor!" she yells, and Fitz tightens his grip on her hand, his fingers pushing through hers to attain the best leverage to hold on. She meets his worried gaze, and she is still crying, and she tightens her own grip on him. "I'm sorry," she tells him. "You're dying, Fitz."  
  
Fitz Kreiner has never considered himself a hero. Fitz Kreiner has adapted to a myriad variety of situations and his odd way of life, and he has grown and changed through the course of his many adventures. He has gone from feeling odd man out and disoriented and unnecessary to being firecely protective of his friends, the Doctor especially. He has grown to respect the Doctor, deeply, even perhaps understand the Doctor in hs own poxy human way. He has grown to trust the Doctor, learn how to help the Doctor, admire the Doctor.  
  
Sometimes Fitz Kreiner forgets.  
  
He forgets that he *is* only a poxy human, and he forgets that he isn't the Doctor, and he forgets that he doesn't have the Doctor's luck and knack for getting into and out of situations, and he forgets Sod's Law.  
  
"Sorry--Doctor--" Fitz says, and he is sorry because he was hoping to die in his sleep at the ripe old age of ninety-two, confounding everyone by not dying of lung cancer or emphysema or any of those other cigarette-induced diseases. But at least this way he can still prove 'em all wrong.  
  
"Don't be, Fitz," the Doctor says, and there's that hitch in his breath again, as if Fitz is leaning too heavily against him and he can't breathe properly for the extra weight against his chest. "You've been a very good friend. I'm sorry I didn't get back here sooner--"  
  
"Don't be," Fitz cuts him off.  
  
"Dammit, Fitz," Anji is scowling again, and still crying, and Fitz just knows she hates herself for it. He offers her a cheeky grin and is disappointed to find he still can't come up with a remark to tease her with.  
  
Fitz Kreiner sometimes forgets he's a poxy human, and a coward, and just a half-German guitar player from 1963 with a mum who was a bit insane before she died. And sometimes Fitz Kreiner forgets that he doesn't consider himself a hero.  
  
The anticipation is intolerable. The beating wings attached to his heart rip free, somewhere distantly a twanging guitar chord finally resolves itself, and Fitz Kreiner manages to whisper a good-bye to his friends before he dies. 


End file.
